


last dances, et cetera

by twobirdsofficial



Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: Other, aka katya and violet being stupid, in this case just violet being stupid actually, i’m back on my old shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2018-01-04
Packaged: 2019-02-28 01:59:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13261227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twobirdsofficial/pseuds/twobirdsofficial
Summary: violet is being a bitch. katya is healing, and stuff.





	last dances, et cetera

**Author's Note:**

> did my best to proofread but i’m laptop-less at the moment so please forgive any weird formatting things. 
> 
> **content warnings:** f slur in both pejorative  & reclaimed contexts, a somewhat nonconsensual kiss.

She’s in the back alley with Katya, cold and tired, smoking and debriefing after a gig. It’s one of those things in New York, a party at a gay club that managed to raise the booking fee for a couple Ru girls. With, probably, some sad community center bake sales. (She’s being catty. Homemade gluten-free oatmeal raisin doesn’t pay for the kind of money they charge.) It’s the kind of gig that Violet’s agent sneaks onto her schedule once in a while because he’s taken it upon himself to try to make her seem approachable. _Good fucking luck._

“Besides,” he said, “Katya’s doing it. You still like her, right?” and Violet rolled her eyes and said _fine, but I need a day off after_ and that was that.

Katya’s taken off everything but her makeup and is leaning against the back wall of the club in a black hoodie with two pairs of lashes on. Some queens look demented like this but Katya just looks kind of...soft. She’s slowly coming off the performance high with the help of the joint she and Violet are passing back and forth. It’s Katya’s—she seems to try to keep one on her person at all times, squirreled away in one of her many pockets. And she’s always game to share, which is one of the many reasons Violet likes having Katya around. Not that she would tell her so.

In contrast to Katya, Violet is still wearing everything she performed in, minus eight-inch fetish heels and corset, plus combat boots and a long fur coat. “Lesbian burlesque dancer walking home from the club at 2 am,” Katya declared her, at which Violet scrunched up her face. “A little on the nose.”

Katya hands the joint back to Violet, who regards it for a while before inhaling. “You really _like_ these shows,” she says, almost in wonderment.

Katya’s grinning, still looking like she’s in some kind of performance fugue state. “You don’t?” she asks, even though she knows the answer. (This is another thing Violet likes about Katya. Katya likes to hear herself talk, sure, but she likes to hear other people talk even more.)

Violet rolls her eyes. “I like my stadium-seating theaters. Velvet curtains.” 

Katya snorts. “You’re lucky it’s twenty-seventeen then, mama. You couldn’t put a drag queen in the theater...even, probably, even ten years ago.”

“Six _hundred_ years ago, though…”

“Shakespeare!” Katya calls out delightedly, like a trivia show contestant. “The original drag queens, bitch! Imagine being a closeted gay man in fourteen-hundred-BS and someone casts you as Juliet!”

This is the point in conversations where Katya starts to get lost in herself. Violet crosses her arms, hoping Katya will realize that she’s leaving her in the dust. And unfortunately, because Katya is endlessly thoughtful, she does.

“You feeling ready to go?” she asks.

Violet looks ahead of her, at the ivy- and graffiti-covered brick wall of the next building, and shakes her head. “Not yet.”

She hands the joint back to Katya again. It’s getting smaller and this time when Katya takes it their fingers touch, and Violet flushes warm despite the late-November chill.

“Katya,” she starts to say, and the back door opens.

It’s one of the local queens, a good dancer who Violet almost admires. She’s in street clothes and holding a cigarette between her fingers, but when she sees Violet and Katya she starts to back away. “Sorry—I can—”

Violet would have let her go. It’s not her fault if people are intimidated by her. But she knows what Katya’s going to do before she does it, which is call the queen by name and pull her out onto the patch of concrete that she and Violet are occupying. “You were incredible, did you sew that dress yourself?...Well tell your boyfriend he’s a genius and you’re a genius for designing it, and don’t ever let that man go, mama. Seamstresses are expensive.”

“Mind if I—?” the queen asks, unnecessarily, indicating her cigarette. “And thank you so much.”

Katya waves the nub of a joint in her hand. “As long as you let me smell your breath when you’re done.” She winks, and Violet feels an unreasonable surge of anger. “Trying to quit.” She cranes her neck to look back at Violet. “Wasn’t Roxanne fucking genius?”

Violet nods, dispassionate. “Good energy.”

Katya says something to the queen that Violet can’t quite hear, but she thinks she catches the word “sourpuss.”

The queen lights her cigarette and takes a drag, breathing her smoke directly into Katya’s face. Katya cackles with delight and then makes an obscene moaning sound, followed by “Oh yes….that’s it…” and a series of pornographic whimpers. The queen shrieks with laughter, and she and Katya are doubled over together.

Violet’s face burns. She bites the inside of her cheek and stares straight ahead. Some unoriginal dispossessed tween tagged the wall with _GOD HATES FAGS_ , but someone partially covered the word “hate” with a big blue spray-paint heart. Below this is another message, this one in Sharpie: _God IS a fag <3_

In a better mood she might have put it on her Instagram story. _Love finds a way. GOD <3’s FAGS._ As it is, she doesn’t find it funny or charming. She digs her nails into her palms until the queen’s cigarette burns out and the door shuts behind her once again.

Katya rejoins Violet against the wall, and Violet’s rage sharpens to a point. She surges against Katya, all teeth and nails. (She wants to swallow her whole.)

Katya is kissing back, and then she isn’t, and a moment later she presses a hand against Violet’s chest.

Violet steps back, breathing fast and shallow. “What?” she says.

“I’m trying to—make healthier choices,” she says, awkward in her earnestness. “You know...new year’s resolutions.”

”It’s November,” Violet snaps.

“I’m sorry, Violet. It’s not that I don’t want to.”

She really does look sorry, and it makes Violet want to vomit, and then it makes her want to say  _So you’re quitting me like cigarettes._ But it’s a line that 1) sounds like it was written by The Chainsmokers and 2) would open her up to a _Brokeback Mountain_ joke that she’s really not in the mood for.

Instead Violet laughs and she can hear how hollow it sounds, out here in the cold almost-winter silence. “Don’t do me any favors, bitch,” she says, and stalks back inside. The door slams shut behind her and she breathes heavily, the skin of her chest turning patchy pink.


End file.
